The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice
By Zak Ebrahim
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
What is it like to grow up with a terrorist in your home? Zak Ebrahim was only seven years old when, on November 5th, 1990, his father El-Sayyid Nosair shot and killed the leader of the Jewish Defense League. While in prison, Nosair helped plan the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. In one of his infamous video messages, Osama bin Laden urged the world to “Remember El-Sayyid Nosair.”
For Zak Ebrahim, a childhood amongst terrorism was all he knew. After his father’s incarceration, his family moved often, and as the perpetual new kid in class, he faced constant teasing and exclusion. Yet, though his radicalized father and uncles modeled fanatical beliefs, to Ebrahim something never felt right. To the shy, awkward boy, something about the hateful feelings just felt unnatural.
In this book, Ebrahim dispels the myth that terrorism is a foregone conclusion for people trained to hate. Based on his own remarkable journey, he shows that hate is always a choice—but so is tolerance. Though Ebrahim was subjected to a violent, intolerant ideology throughout his childhood, he did not become radicalized. Ebrahim argues that people conditioned to be terrorists are actually well positioned to combat terrorism, because of their ability to bring seemingly incompatible ideologies together in conversation and advocate in the fight for peace. Ebrahim argues that everyone, regardless of their upbringing or circumstances, can learn to tap into their inherent empathy and embrace tolerance over hatred. His original, urgent message is fresh, groundbreaking, and essential to the current discussion about terrorism.
Zak Ebrahim
Zak Ebrahim was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on March 24, 1983, the son of an Egyptian industrial engineer and an American school teacher. When Ebrahim was seven, his father shot and killed the founder of the Jewish Defense League, Rabbi Meir Kahane. From behind bars his father, El-Sayyid Nosair, co-masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Ebrahim spent the rest of his childhood moving from city to city, hiding his identity from those who knew of his father. He now dedicates his life to speaking out against terrorism and spreading his message of peace and nonviolence.
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Reviews for The Terrorist's Son
11 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a very honest account of what it was like for the author to grow up with a terrorist father -- a father in sentenced to life plus 15 years for murder and other crimes. The author was taught bigotry and hatred yet managed to overcome his upbringing and choose his own path of acceptance and nonviolence. Inspirational and insightful.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A very brief but moving memoir of a childhood damaged by hate and violence. The author's father was El-Sayyid Nosair, who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane and then, from prison, helped plan the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Ebrahim was 7 at the time of his father's arrest, and what followed was a childhood lost to confusion, fear, and poverty. As a teenager, Ebrahim was offered a job at Busch Gardens, where he finally was able to meet people of other faiths and ethnicities, and he made a complete break with religion, hate, and his father. In a moving final scene, an FBI agent who had worked on Nosair's case met Ebrahim and said she'd always wondered what happened to Nosair's children. Ebrahim's response: We are not his children anymore.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a very short but very intense book by the son of the man convicted of the World Trade Center bombing. It was a tale of how it is possible to be raised in an environment of hatred and violence but come out loving and peaceful. Zak Ebrahim's father was from Egypt and married an American woman who had embraced the Islam religion. They had three sons and seemed to be a perfect family until things started to go wrong. His father lost his job and had to take ones with less money and less prestige than his engineering background should have provided. The worse things got the more he turned to his mosque and the Quran. He shot and killed a rabbi and was sent to prison for related charges. While he was in prison he organized the bombing of the WTC. After that he was sentenced to life without parole. Growing up in the middle of all this turmoil, Zak was bullied and brutally abused by his stepfather but made his own mind up to reject the violence and hate.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This was a fascinating story about the son of a terrorist. It is a very fast read and gives insight into a world very few are allowed to see. In some ways I wish the book had included more. For example, the family who grew up in the US, moves to Egypt and very little is told of their move or their adjustment to life in a foreign country. Also I feel like some emotions have been glossed over. It almost seems like an outsider is writing when he tells about the people who did him wrong. He describes the scenes well, but I never feel his anger, resentment or betrayal as I was reading the scene. I would DEFINITELY recommend this book.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing book, inspiring! Nobody is destined to follow there is always a choice. I wish more people knew this.
Book preview
The Terrorist's Son - Zak Ebrahim
My mother shakes me awake in my bed: There’s been an accident,
she says.
I am seven years old, a chubby kid in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas. I’m accustomed to being roused before dawn, but only by my father, and only to pray on my little rug with the minarets. Never by my mother.
It’s eleven at night. My father is not home. Lately, he has been staying at the mosque in Jersey City deeper and deeper into the night. But he is still Baba to me—funny, loving, warm. Just this morning he tried to teach me, yet again, how to tie my shoes. Has he been in an accident? What kind of accident? Is he hurt? Is he dead? I can’t get the questions out because I’m too scared of the answers.
My mother flings open a white sheet—it mushrooms briefly, like a cloud—then leans down to spread it on the floor. Look in my eyes, Z,
she says, her face so knotted with worry that I hardly recognize her. You need to get dressed as quick as you can. And then you need to put your things onto this sheet, and wrap it up tight. Okay? Your sister will help you.
She moves toward the door. "Yulla, Z, yulla. Let’s go."
Wait,
I say. It’s the first word I’ve managed to utter since I tumbled out from under my He-Man blanket. "What should I put in the sheet? What . . . things?"
I’m a good kid. Shy. Obedient. I want to do as my mother says.
She stops to look at me. Whatever will fit,
she says. I don’t know if we’re coming back.
She turns, and she’s gone.
Once we’ve packed, my sister, my brother, and I pad down to the living room. My mother has called my father’s cousin in Brooklyn—we call him Uncle Ibrahim, or just Ammu—and she’s talking to him heatedly now. Her face is flushed. She’s clutching the phone with her left hand and, with her right, nervously adjusting her hijab where it’s come loose around her ear. The TV plays in the background. Breaking news. We interrupt this program. My mother catches us watching, and hurries to turn it off.
She talks to Ammu Ibrahim awhile longer, her back to us. When she hangs up, the phone begins ringing. It’s a jarring sound in the middle of the night: too loud and like it knows something.
My mother answers. It is one of Baba’s friends from the mosque, a taxi driver named Mahmoud. Everyone calls him Red because of his hair. Red sounds desperate to reach my father. He’s not here,
my mother says. She listens for a moment. Okay,
she says, and hangs up.
The phone rings again. That terrible noise.
This time, I can’t figure out who’s calling. My mother says, Really?
She says, Asking about us? The police?
A little later, I wake up on a blanket on the living room floor. Somehow, in the midst of the chaos, I’ve nodded off. Everything we could possibly carry—and more—is piled by the door, threatening to topple at any second. My mother paces around, checking and rechecking her purse. She has all of our birth certificates: proof, if anyone demands it, that she is our mother. My father, El-Sayyid Nosair, was born in Egypt. But my mother was born in Pittsburgh. Before she recited the Shahada in a local mosque and became a Muslim—before she took the name Khadija Nosair—she went by Karen Mills.
Your Uncle Ibrahim is coming for us,
she tells me when she sees me sitting up and rubbing my eyes. The worry in her voice is tinged with impatience now. If he ever gets here.
I do not ask where we are going, and no one tells me. We just wait. We wait far longer than it should take Ammu to drive from Brooklyn to New Jersey. And the longer we wait, the faster my mother paces and the more I feel like something in my chest is going to burst. My sister puts an arm around me. I try to be brave. I put an arm around my brother.
Ya Allah!
my mother says. This is making me insane.
I nod like I understand.
• • •
Here is what my mother is not saying: Meir Kahane, a militant rabbi and the founder of the Jewish Defense League, has been shot by an Arab gunman after a speech in a ballroom at a Marriott hotel in New York City. The gunman fled the scene, shooting an elderly man in the leg in the process. He rushed into a cab that was waiting in front of the hotel, but then bolted out again and began running down the street, gun in hand. A law enforcement officer from the U.S. Postal Service, who happened to be passing by, exchanged fire with him. The gunman collapsed on the street. The newscasters couldn’t help noting a gruesome detail: both Rabbi Kahane and the assassin had been shot in the neck. Neither was expected to live.
Now, the TV stations are updating the story constantly. An hour ago, while my sister, brother, and I slept away the last seconds we had of anything remotely resembling a childhood, my mother overheard the name Meir Kahane and looked up at the screen. The first thing she saw was footage of the Arab gunman, and her heart nearly stopped: it was my father.
• • •
It’s one in the morning by the time Uncle Ibrahim pulls up in front of our apartment. He has taken so long because he waited for his wife and children to get ready. He insisted they accompany him because, as a devout Muslim, he couldn’t risk being alone in a car with a woman who was not his wife—my mother, in other words. There are five people in the car already. And there are four more of us trying to wedge in somehow. I feel my mother’s anger rise: She’s just as devout as my uncle, but her children were going to be in the car with the two of them anyway, so what was the point of wasting all that time?
Soon, we are driving through a tunnel, the sickly fluorescent lights rushing over our heads. The car is crazily cramped. We’re a giant knot of legs and arms. My mother needs to use the bathroom. Uncle Ibrahim asks if she wants to stop somewhere. She shakes her head. She says, "Let’s just get the kids to Brooklyn and then let’s go to the hospital. Okay? Quick as we can. Yulla."
It’s the first time anyone has used the word hospital. My father is in the hospital. Because he’s had an accident. That means he is hurt, but it also means he is not dead. The pieces of the puzzle start clicking together in my head.
When we get to Brooklyn—Ammu Ibrahim lives in a vast brick apartment building near Prospect Park—all nine of us fall out of the car in a tangled lump. Once we’re in